Denmark set to approve new climate change law

Denmark is set to pass its climate change bill into law on Wednesday, binding it to reducing its emissions 40% by 2020.

The bill, which was announced in February, will receive its third and final hearing in the Danish Parliament on 11 June. If passed, it will need to receive the Royal Assent before taking effect.

With wide support from a cross-section of the political parties which make up Denmark’s coalition government, the bill is expected to pass easily, giving a boost to the country’s already ambitious policies on tackling climate change.

Denmark’s climate minister, Rasmus Helveg Petersen, told RTCC that the bill was the “right and proper course” for the country as it seeks to create a fossil free energy sector by 2050.

The 40% reduction target intended by Denmark’s Climate Change Act is double the EU’s own target. It will also set up a climate change council ensuring the target is met “on a scientific basis and in a cost effective way,” said Petersen, as well as setting targets every five years.

Petersen spoke to RTCC on the sidelines of climate negotiations taking place this week in Bonn, where one of the major discussions has been how to raise ambition prior to 2020, when the UN’s new climate deal is scheduled to take effect.

Despite an announcement from the EU that the 28-state bloc was set to overachieve its 2020 target by 4.5%, no countries present at the discussions announced an increase on current goals.

Ministers will next tackle the issue of pre-2020 ambition at the UN’s upcoming conference in Lima in December, with a potential opportunity for interim announcements at a summit that Ban Ki-moon will host in New York in December.

A growing number of countries are passing legislation as a means of tackling climate change. The UK was the first country to pass a Climate Change Act in 2008, while other countries have passed sector-specific laws to tackle emissions.

Such legislation is key because it means that consecutive governments are legally bound to a long term target, as well as giving confidence to the private sector, says Darragh Conway, a climate law specialist at consultants Climate Focus.

“If countries want to set a target for reducing emissions then it probably does help if that’s set in law, especially if that makes it binding for the government,” he said. “In that sense, the government is held to account, and that’s quite valuable.”

He added that a headline climate law could help streamline action across various sectors. “It’s about energy policy, industrial policy, economic policy, land and forestry policy, agriculture, so it can’t be addressed by an environmental ministry. It has to be addressed at a high level,” he said.

Around 400 legislators met this week in Mexico to discuss the role of climate laws. The three-day meeting concluded with a resolution by MPs from 80 countries to push for tougher climate legislation in their domestic parliaments.

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jaffa99

Seems odd that Denmark are legislating for what is essentially a religion. Clearly the ecofacists are well ingrained.

No warming for 18 years and counting.

KnightBiologist

Another reason I’m proud of my heritage. Jeg blev født i København! Denmark is largely atheist and agnostic which makes the previous comment all the more ridiculous.

jaffa99

Oh, is that the “strongest El Nino event of the previous 50 years” that wasn’t predicted by ANY climate model? Yet we’re supposed to make huge financial decisions based on those same models.

As for “cherry-picking”, yes I guess I “cherry-picked” the last 18 years, the most recent 18 years, the 18 years where the warming (which was predicted to be accelerating) would be highest – but it isn’t – it is non-existent. So again the models are falsified.

But it’s not about warming, warming and cooling cycles are quite normal. Alarmists need to show the warming is both unusual and has negative impact to justify their demands for changes that negatively affect people lives. There is no proof that the modest warming over the past 100 years is unnatural and there’s abundant evidence that it’s actually beneficial.

In my experience warmists are either fools or liars – which are you?

robdammit

Climate change is real and is happening, most conservative neophytes don’t understand that the debate isn’t over if it’s real or not. The debate is whether climate change is natural or if mankind is causing it.

mbee1

I would like to point out your model line is not correct, Even the IPCC admits no warming in the last 17 years. If you look at the numbers on your own graph the temperature on average has not risen in that time. Your line is a distortion of the numbers as the actual average is flat.since about 1998. You get your tilted line by ignoring the spike and than ignoring the average since than, I could give you a tilted line all the way back to 1625, the lowest point about of the little ice age but that would ignore the medievil warm period and a whole bunch of stops in warming since 1625 such as the one from 1940 to1980. If you take any short period you can get any tilt you want by simply picking the correct start and ending points. As for the El Nino claim, what about in 100 years, 500 years, 5000 years? Again you are cherry picking and really do not know what the El Nino was 51 years ago, especially since nobody realized back than there was a El Nino or El Nina. Perhaps I should also point out the El events affect the pacific not the whole world which reciieves the same solar gain only the Els distribute it around differently in the Pacific. The IPCC model uses data only from 1951 so they can ignore all contrary temperatures which might conflict with the political model they use to extort money from the first world and put in their pockets.